Puns and other obsessions. A trip inside an OCD mind.

Gay and Mental Illness

Well this is going to be controversial. Please stop reading here if you don’t feel like you’re the type of person who might actually tackle this topic with an open mind. Don’t read if you don’t believe in mental health and/or gay people.

From now on when I say Gay I’m referring to the LGBTTQQIAAP community, which I am sure to add a letter or two after I finish this article.

Let’s start off with the first controversial statement, “Being gay is not, I repeat, not a mental illness”. I’m sorry for any person reading this and getting their bubble burst. Let me tell you why.

So as Maria Von Trapp would say, “Let’s start at the very beginning”, which I personally think is a very good place to start. Mental illness is something one suffers from and is bothersome and causes discomfort. Internal discomfort that sometimes translates or projects to the external. So depression and anxiety are examples of mental illness and they are annoying as hell. They make you feel gloomy and give you a sense of unease. A lot of people may not be able to understand completely due to the fact that they haven’t personally felt their symptoms, just like I won’t feel the pains of giving birth; although I’ve heard it comes at a close second to getting smacked in the nuts, I’m not completely sure, because I came up with that just now. But I digress. In a nutshell, having a mental illness is not a choice, but is annoying as hell and one should try to live with it, beat it, and cope with having it.

Now to go on to the topic of being gay. Just like mental illness, it’s not a choice. Just as I can’t choose my mental illness from a catalog of mental illnesses (or is the plural of illness, illni….we may never know) you can’t actually pick if you want to be gay or not, or who you are attracted to, or what gender you feel you belong to. And that’s as far as the comparison between the two should go. So let’s stop blaming people for what they are and have.

The second point is “Gay people don’t need therapy”. I’d rather if people who are pouring all their efforts into treating gay people, shift these efforts and start helping people with actual mental illnesses (or is it illnii? *suspense builds*) who are suffering.

Being gay doesn’t cause you internal suffering. The only suffering they go through is sometimes external depending on the environment surrounding them. Never has a gay person felt discomfort from being gay. I’m not saying they don’t suffer, they do, but not because of their sexual orientation. Au contraire (and thus I have used all the French I know), the suffering comes from external factors, mainly, people who do not accept them and accept their “difference”. It’s really hard for some to wrap their minds around things they haven’t experienced.

One last thing I want to tackle is the aspect of adopting kids by a gay couple. I’m talking about it only from a point of view that cares and argues for the psychological impact on the kids.

I personally think adoption is not just fine but I wish it would happen more. Wait, hold your horses and pump your brakes. No one would appreciate having kids more than people who can’t have them. A couple of counter-arguments I have heard was the fact that it’s not natural. It goes against nature and having two parents of the same sex is detrimental to the kid’s psyche.

To that I would argue the following, sometimes it’s not natural for a heterosexual couple to bear children due to being sterile so they do tend to the option of adoption (I swear didn’t mean to rhyme, for that I ain’t got the time *drops keyboard*). So in some cases it goes against nature for a different sex couple to get pregnant. In other cases sometimes on of the parents dies, and the kid is raised by the other which happens to be of a single sex, therefore the kid is subject to only one sex growing up. And also sometimes a kid is born into an abusive family, either physical or mental, and that’s not natural too.

Finally I think any kind of love is better than no love at all. A lot of kids are suffering and getting depressed because of lack of love in their lives. Who cares if this love comes from parents who are of the same sex. Who cares? Who? Who? Owl tell you…No one should care. All everyone should care about is that love is given no matter who it is from.

Welcome back to the blogosphere! I remembered this blog a few months ago and was hoping you were well and that you’d post again soon.
Well put.
It is the lack of both perspective and empathy that drives people into fear and aggressive rejection of all rational arguments and natural variations (in terms of sexuality, gender expression…).